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Editor and Publisher reports that The Associated Press leads news organizations in using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents from the Pentagon. A log of such requests from 2000 to early 2005 was compiled by a San Francisco-based activist. The AP filed 73 such requests, followed by the Los Angeles Times with 42…
Read MoreTanya Schevitz and Todd Wallack of the San Francisco Chronicle examine how much the University of California system really pays its administrators. “In addition to salaries and overtime, payroll records obtained by The Chronicle show that employees received a total of $871 million in bonuses, administrative stipends, relocation packages and other forms of cash compensation…
Read MoreJoe Mahr and Phillip O’Connor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch find that “repeated recommendations from all levels of government in an eight-state region of the central United States have been largely ignored on how to best brace for an event that scientists expect to kill thousands and cause widespread chaos.” The Post-Dispatch reviewed studies, reports,…
Read MoreLise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle reports that a witness now says he was influenced by police to identify Ruben Cantu, then 17, as the killer in an alleged murder-robbery. Cantu, who claimed to have been framed in the capital murder case, was executed in August 1993. “A dozen years after his execution, a Houston…
Read MoreA series of Lexington Herald-Leader reports from John Stamper and Bill Estep, with contributions from Linda J. Johnson, computer-assisted reporting coordinator, reporter Linda Blackford and news researcher Lu-Ann Farrar, examines Kentucky’s expensive efforts to recruit industries and failures in the program. “Instead, at a cost of $1.8 billion, Kentucky’s main economic-incentive programs have overburdened taxpayers…
Read MoreJim Davenport of The Associated Press wrote a series of reports detailing the costs of public records and abuse of executive sessions, as part of a statewide Freedom of Information audit completed by The Associated Press and the South Carolina Press Association. The investigation found that a quarter of elected officials in a statewide survey…
Read MoreBert Dalmer of The Des Moines Register analyzed land records to uncover an insider land deal that makes big-name developers rich but ends with taxpayers paying twice as much. The operators of a struggling scale-model air show sold 84 acres along Interstate Highway 35 at $15,000 an acre, though other land being sold in the…
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